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Alex Laburu writes "The 17th World Computer Chess Championship is taking place in Pamplona through the 18th of May. As of this writing, Rybka (winner of the last two editions) is ahead of the pack and playing Shredder to consolidate its lead over Junior. You can watch the games live or otherwise follow the tournament asynchronously on the standings page, where you'll also find information about the hardware used by various teams."

Although, now that I think about it, three by one still works as a description, if you take the starting position of the piece as 1 instead of 0. That works out logically to 2 grids forward from where you started.

So:3 empty2 pawn1 knight

Knight moves from where it is at square 1 to a square one left or one right of the empty space.

However, when I posted 3 by 1, that wasn't what I was thinking, I just didn't pay that much attention to what I wrote.

Yeah, there is a complete lack of tension. Watching sport (to me at least) is a lot about how players use psychological maneuvers to get their opponent to make a mistake (or do something they would not usually do).

Just imagine the commentary on a comp vs comp chess game:

Jim: Comp1 just made the most optimal move under the constraints of its x-heuristics algorithm...
Joe: I agree Jim. He must be trying to optimize the variables of his problem.
Jim: I see comp2 is taking his time choosing between two di

Mod parent up. Anyone who claims computer vs. computer games are dull is either outright lying or has no clue about chess (and hence probably finds all games boring).

In fact, these days it's hard to tell the games between the top 20 players and the top engines apart. Both groups (computers and men) are not afraid of losing and will go for the move that promises the most chances (and will lead to the most imbalanced positions), instead of going for a safer and 'duller' alternatives, as you often see players

As it is, I found that most comp vs comp games very boring in a strangely drawish way.

It doesn't help that they play at a level higher than any human can comprehend. Think about that, even a grandmaster watching the game in realtime doesn't fully appreciate the rationale for what he is seeing.

Do they get FIDE ratings? It's great to see interest being brought to the game. They should have Anand play against the victor for a man vs. machine championship, like Kasparov vs. Fritz a few years back. Those are such elegant games to watch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRW9io3myOI [youtube.com]

As a chess researcher (in human cognition), I once had dinner with Doug Hofstadter and he mentioned his ideas concerning how a chess program should play, like humans do. It has been my goal for over 5 years now, and it's really hard. I could show Doug's idea that "analogy lies at the core of perception (of any scenario, including chess) by making psychological experiments in all levels, from novices to grandmasters. That work came out in journals like Cognitive Science, Minds & Machines, and New Ideas in Psychology (accepted). So I think we're on the right track. But my paper on the computational model [capyblanca.com] has been rejected three times, the last of which, fortunately, has good reports from referees who only want the piece to be rewritten.

I long for the day in which Hofstadter's ideas would become more mainstream in AI and cognitive science.

You have a great question there. In my point of view, analogy refers to "experience recognition", not "pattern recognition". It's hard to put that down in a few words, but the idea is that the patterns (outside of any human understanding) do not really matter as much as we tend to think. They only serve as cues, and the recognition that arises in the brain is a function of both (outside) pattern and (internal, previous) experience. We propose that "experience recognition" ENCODES mostly experiences, ins

Well, I am open to the idea that pattern recognition is a subset of analogy, rather than vice-versa.

We propose that "experience recognition" ENCODES mostly experiences, instead of patterns (outside of any understanding)

I am having trouble with that, so maybe the following will not be relevant. But I see the brain as largely a pattern recognizer, however that doesn't mean people have a conscious perception of patterns. You can look at a wide range of objects and determine whether each is a "chair," but t

Do they get FIDE ratings? It's great to see interest being brought to the game. They should have Anand play against the victor for a man vs. machine championship, like Kasparov vs. Fritz a few years back.

They get estimates, but even the single-processor machines they run them on now get 3000+ estimates, both from improvements in hardware and chess algorithms. And if we built a chess supercomputer to the best of our ability now, it'd be way past that again. So either Anand would be totally overrun, or it'd be because they crippled the hardware. Everybody knows that game is over, computers won on raw processing power. They do sometimes do matches with people in the top 100 but then usually the humans are give

Interesting. Well, then computer chess geeks should refocus on cracking a game of Go. That should keep them busy for a while.:P

No doubt. There isn't a go program running on anything that I can't give a 9 stone handicap to and crush almost without thinking - and I'm only 2k. The day a computer beats a pro seems to be far in the distant future.

A 7 stone handicap is still HUGE. I've beaten a professional (Kano 7d) with that handicap.

Sure, but it certainly puts to rest your boast:

There isn't a go program running on anything that I can't give a 9 stone handicap to and crush almost without thinking - and I'm only 2k. The day a computer beats a pro seems to be far in the distant future.

So, not only has a computer already beaten a pro, but the pro was actually one of the top at the game, having won a major tournament.

Care to wager about beating that program giving it a 9-stone handi yourself? Come on, you said that you could crush any go program running "almost without thinking" with that handicap.

Go may be complex, and the complexities of strategic thinking are really hard (including even the most basic "big" vs. "vital" concepts), but clear

A 7 stone handicap is still HUGE. I've beaten a professional (Kano 7d) with that handicap.
Sure, but it certainly puts to rest your boast:
There isn't a go program running on anything that I can't give a 9 stone handicap to and crush almost without thinking - and I'm only 2k. The day a computer beats a pro seems to be far in the distant future.
So, not only has a computer already beaten a pro, but the pro was actually one of the top at the game, having won a major tournament.
Care to wager about beating that program giving it a 9-stone handi yourself? Come on, you said that you could crush any go program running "almost without thinking" with that handicap.
Go may be complex, and the complexities of strategic thinking are really hard (including even the most basic "big" vs. "vital" concepts), but clearly Go computer programs have gotten way beyond where you thought they were.
At this point, it seems like there are at least some programs that outpace your expectations. It is entirely conceivable that Go programs could be good enough in a mid term time frame that they give stones to all but the Dans & pros.
Regards.

I downloaded the latest publicly available version of MoGo [www.lri.fr] (release 3) and I have to say I was fairly impressed. The program beat me a couple of times at a 9 stone handicap but now I can beat it. Here [hiico.com] is the first game I played. This [hiico.com] is the first game I won. The trouble is that go-playing programs make a systemic pattern of mistakes that's readily apparent after playing a few times. Mogo seems to have a much better "concept" of eyeshape than other programs I've played. Its main overall strategy seems

I just found an earlier discussion on slashdot [slashdot.org] about this program. I think two of the comments (this [slashdot.org] and this [slashdot.org]) might provide insight to someone who isn't familiar with the game.

At this point, it seems like there are at least some programs that outpace your expectations. It is entirely conceivable that Go programs could be good enough in a mid term time frame that they give stones to all but the Dans & pros.

" There isn't a go program running on anything that I can't give a 9 stone handicap to and crush almost without thinking - and I'm only 2k."

In what reality do you live? Even excluding the new generation programs that are as strong or stronger than you (2kyu-1dan), the old generation programs still hover around the 6-8 kyu range. That would be 4-6 stones handicap. You could possibly get that up to 9 if you trained to specifically beat a program. But it would in no way be easy.

" There isn't a go program running on anything that I can't give a 9 stone handicap to and crush almost without thinking - and I'm only 2k."

In what reality do you live? Even excluding the new generation programs that are as strong or stronger than you (2kyu-1dan), the old generation programs still hover around the 6-8 kyu range. That would be 4-6 stones handicap. You could possibly get that up to 9 if you trained to specifically beat a program. But it would in no way be easy.

This isn't to say that go programs will overtake humans anytime soon. While the Monte Carlo algorithm did revolutionise the go ai world, it basically meant a quick leap up from the old min-max based ones. But now the reality is beginning to catch up with the programs. Monte Carlo may be better than min-max but brute forcing is still not really viable even if you use a more efficent way of brute forcing.

" There isn't a go program running on anything that I can't give a 9 stone handicap to and crush almost without thinking - and I'm only 2k."

In what reality do you live? Even excluding the new generation programs that are as strong or stronger than you (2kyu-1dan), the old generation programs still hover around the 6-8 kyu range. That would be 4-6 stones handicap. You could possibly get that up to 9 if you trained to specifically beat a program. But it would in no way be easy.

This isn't to say that go programs will overtake humans anytime soon. While the Monte Carlo algorithm did revolutionise the go ai world, it basically meant a quick leap up from the old min-max based ones. But now the reality is beginning to catch up with the programs. Monte Carlo may be better than min-max but brute forcing is still not really viable even if you use a more efficent way of brute forcing.

I live in a reality where there is such a thing as combinatorial explosion [wikipedia.org]. The higher levels of go playing are quite simply incomprehensible to beginners, much less computer programs.

Everybody knows that game is over, computers won on raw processing power.

Do you have any evidence to back that up?

Deep Blue and Fritz were great chess players, but when pitted against the greatest humans, they were about equal. Fritz had mostly tied. Deep Blue lost one match against Kasparov, and won one match, and then retired. Both games Deep Blue had the advantage. It was programmed specifically against Kasparov, but Kasparov had never seen it play.

I used to think that modern humans didn't stand a chance against modern computers; mostly I got that from the Sarah Connor Chroni

Too bad Fischer isn't around. I found him much more interesting to watch than Kasparov. He would smash opponents, including computers (albiet, they weren't nearly up to the level they are now) into submission. Great stuff.

"Eventually"? I imagine that the entire problem space will be mapped, and the draw for black or white will decide the result. That's when we'll have to add the 3rd dimension, and ask the Vulcans if they fancy a game.

The same organization ran 2 competitions at the same time. The Open Hardware Computer Chess Olympiad had no limits on hardware, and the World Computer Chess Championship has a limit to 8 cores.Both were won by the same team, running the Rybka chess engine.

Including the US Championship and a huge one held in Vegas every year. I'd love to see how this is done and would really like to attend one of these. Gotta dig in to the site and see the rules for draws: if the machines can offer them, or if only the operators. IIRC, when Kasparov was playing Deep Blue, it was up to Blue's operators to decide whether to accept an offer. The current leader has one draw and is up against #2, who has 2.

That was one thing that fascinated me when I started working high-level

This is very interesting. Being a baseball fan, and thinking back to strat-o-matic as a kid, I can't help but think how I would code such a thing in that game/sport. Football too.

One could be issued a limited number of "skill points" in different disciplines of the game, allocate among his/her team. Situational strategies could be coded so that when certain in-game criteria were met, specific functions could be called.
Play Ball!